Writing ‘short, not shallow’ for better internal comms

Smart Brevity, a popular style of writing pioneered by Axios, started in a newsroom. But since then, it’s spread beyond to become a tool in many corporate environments as well.

“CEOs and CCOs started reaching out to our founders to say, ‘Hey, our employees are reading these newsletters, and they’re not reading our emails. What’s going on?’” said Emily Inverso, head of content and communication strategy at Axios HQ,  during  a Power Conversation at Ragan’s Internal Communications Conference. “So we realized it was really transferable.”

While the depth may change and the audience may change, the same fundamentals can keep someone reading a news article engaged as someone reading an internal newsletter.

“We’ve seen stories where there’s a fitness organization who was able to reduce email volume by 40% across their organization and all of their frontline properties, but no substance was sacrificed, no complaints from employees,” Inverso said.

She said the success of the format comes down to writing “short, not shallow.” Striking this balance lies in centering expertise and audience in all communications.

“Rather than starting with what do we want to tell them in this moment, you’re going to have a lot faster and better shot at making sure you’re giving them what they expect, delivering it in the language that makes sense to them and not missing out on anything that makes it resonate,” she explained.

And not only does this style resonate with audiences, it also makes measurement much less of a “black box” than it’s historically been.

“Most people don’t know what engagement really means, or what share a voice adds up to,” Inverso said. “But we can connect those dots, we can create the new roadmap and we can help communicators really continue to earn the respect that they deserve and deliver the impact that the entire organization is there to do.”

Watch the full conversation below: